NOO YAWK? FAWGEDDABOUDIT!!

Right then, the trick here is how to tell y'all about everything I did and saw in my 7 days in Noo Yawk without this turning into something resembling the complete works of Shakespeare. Hmmm. Dot points always seem to go down a treat, so here ya go.

THINGS I DID / SAW / EXPERIENCED IN THE BIG APPLE:

• Stayed for the duration of my trip in Spanish Harlem with my Aussie mate Scott, who's a bar manager uptown. His apartment tower also houses an opera singer and a classical violinist, who would each practice at volume every second day or so - fantastic, so New York.
• The Veteran's Day Parade (complete with hundreds of big, loud, hilarious skinhead NYFD fireys)
• 5th Avenue (the whole thing)
• The vast NBA Store (great for watching classic old games on their big screens)
• The Empire State Building observatory
• The Museum of Natural History
• The Met (for about 15 minutes before it shut!)
• Central Park and the surrounding avenues with their ultra-pricey real estate and flocks of poodles to match
• Macy's and Bloomingdales (yawn - they're just shops, people)
• The USS Intrepid aircraft carrier museum
• The Circle Line Boat Cruise right around Manhattan (if there's one thing I'd recommend if you've only got a few days in New York, it's this - you get to see the amazing change from downtown to the forested northern tip of the island and the gorgeous 300-ft Pallisades cliffs across the Hudson River and everything inbetween, with commentary)
• Grand Central (did a free tour, guided by a guy who is Les Murphy's American cousin, I swear! Fantastic tour, too)
• The Madison Square Garden all-access tour (not too bad - plus you get $20 Knicks tickets if you show your pass after the tour!)
• Two, count 'em, two New York Knicks basketball games - great atmosphere, upgraded our seats on our own initiative each time..... ahem.
• Times Square (about 25 times - involuntarily!)
• Two ultra-famous outdoor basketball courts that hosted players like Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Dr J in their youth and after they'd turned pro, not to mention hundreds of other NBA players who've come along each summer to pit their skills against the uber-talented streetballin' New York locals. Rucker Park (Harlem) and The Cage (Greenwich Village).
• The Cathedral of St John the Baptist up in Harlem (3rd largest in the world)
• Explored Harlem in its entirety, and basically every single neighbourhood south of Harlem - Hells Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, Tribeca, Soho, Wall Street and the Financial District, the East Village, the Lower East Side, etc etc. No idea how many km's I racked up, but it was plenty, I'm tellin' ya. Went just about everywhere on Manhattan.
• Even went out to Queens one night, but that was a mistake - the only subway I got wrong the whole time I was there!

And here's the best part - I did it all on just over $350USD. Yep, the free accomodation with Scott (cheers mate) knocked the cost of living way down, but all this talk about New York being expensive is loco, esay. Food is ultra-cheap, so's the public transport if you get the right MetroCard, and how many handbags and shoes do you REALLY need to buy when you're there? Get out of the McBland I-could-be-in-any-city-on-Earth chain stores and go find the real stuff, people. Not to buy, to experience.

And the people. New Yorkers rock. This may come as a wee surprise to those of you who know how anti-American I am, but I was out on the streets from early morning til sometimes after 8 or 9pm and it was non-stop politeness (genuine, mind you, not the saccharine Disney stuff other Yanks sometimes lay on), cheerfulness, vibrancy, comedy, friendliness and flat-out helpfulness the whole way. I could easily spot the New Yorkers from the "other" Americans too - something about the out-of-towners seemed a bit harsher and they stuck out once they opened their gobs.

The only other place where I've had so many offers of help from strangers on the street is Seoul, but New Yorkers are funnier and far more gregarious than South Koreans (hmmm, looks like Captain Obvious just entered the conversation). Not that I was always getting such offers, mind you - one day I got asked for directions by 5 different people at different stages of the day, because apparently with my blue-and-black-striped scarf (thank you soooo much, Li'l Shakes) and the way I was walking ("You walk like you MEAN it", a gigantic black dude told me) I looked like a local. Curiouser and curiouser.

Harlem was a whole 'nother level above the rest of the city though - I had more hilarious / interesting / helpful / genuine random conversations with strangers of all ages in 4 hours walking around Harlem as the only white face in sight than I did the rest of the week, and the week was full of such encounters. Even got to talk town planning and Marxism for about 20 minutes with a homeless dude outside a diner I'd just left. I ain't going to be trying that here in London, let me tell ya.

Anyway, to sum up, I did New York on the cheap, the weather turned bad halfway through, I had the flu grinding me down every single day I was there and I still had one of the best damn weeks of my life. New York is easily my second-favourite place on Earth outside that big white place down the bottom end, no beg-your-pardons. I could easily go back and live there tomorrow if only those damn visas weren't so hard to get. If you've never been, get yourself a $25 seven-day unlimited MetroCard, get a 2- or 3-day New York Pass to get into as many of the above touristy things as you can manage, and you'll be laughing. So, who wants to meet me there in May?